CRIME: Big Martha

When swarthy, oily-voiced Raymond Martinez Fernandez began wooing lonely widows, he was amazed by his own gift for bringing happiness to others. Though he assiduously mulcted his sweethearts of their savings, they fairly beamed with gratitude at his attentions. But little Ray’s gift was his undoing—he attracted his own nemesis, Mrs. Martha Jule Beck.

Florida-born Martha Beck appeared to be eminently respectable. She was the mother of two, a Methodist, an experienced hospital superintendent. Little Ray got her name through a “Lonely Hearts Club” where he started most of his pitches, and he wrote her admiring letters. But when he went to Pensacola to meet her, he discovered that she was not quite his type—she had no money. Also, she weighed 200 Ibs., had wrestler’s arms, a terraced chin and the cold eye of a jail matron.

You Skunk. She loved him at sight. He told her, cautiously, that she was too good for him. He divulged his past: he had gone to Spain after a boyhood near Bridgeport, Conn., had married, fathered four children, deserted his wife, fought for Franco, and ended up in Gibraltar as a police stool pigeon. He had spent five months in jail (for theft) after landing back in the U.S. in 1946. He finally admitted that he preyed on women.

Big Martha’s elephantine passion was only fanned the brighter. She told him a secret too—she had always wanted to be a lady embalmer. Fascinated as a male spider about to be devoured by his mate, little Ray took her along on his larcenous travels.

In many ways, Martha was a fine helpmeet. When one of Ray’s many wives—a Mrs. Myrtle Young—went to the Chicago cops and complained that Ray had taken her savings, steel-nerved Martha stood behind her and winked significantly at the desk sergeant. The sergeant advised Myrtle to see a psychiatrist; she died soon afterward of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Martha watched little Ray with a she-bear’s jealousy, insisted on posing as his sister and sharing his honeymoon trysts. When he was wooing one Irene D. La Point of Springfield, Vt., Martha wrote the woman “hideous things” about him. Irene wrote: “You skunk—but I love you, darn it.” The romance was broken off.

A Hammer for the Bride. During one of Ray’s subsequent romances—an elopement with an Albany widow named Mrs. Janet Fay—Martha intervened even more decisively. Ray promised to marry Janet, drove her to a New York apartment, and got her to turn over checks worth $6,000. But Martha quarreled with Janet, slugged the bride-to-be in the head with a hammer, and ordered Ray to strangle her with a scarf.

This caused some controversy between them. But eventually they bundled Janet’s body up in a trunk, carted it to a rented house in suburban Queens, and buried her in cement in the basement. A few days later they turned up in Grand Rapids, Mich., and after suitable preliminaries, moved in with a new prospect—a pretty, 31-year-old widow named Deliphene Downing.

Ray flattered Deliphene, played with her 21-month-old baby Rainell, helped install an indoor toilet in her house, and finally became her lover. Martha was beside herself with rage and jealousy—particularly after Ray offered Martha $2,000 and the car to clear out.

One night she announced that she knew a medicine which would induce an abortion, smilingly gave Deliphene a handful of sleeping pills. When the pretty widow passed out, Martha directed Ray to do something about her. Ray got a .45-cal. pistol and shot her in the head. They dug a hole in the basement, dumped her in, and cemented up her grave. Deliphene’s baby cried noisily and refused to be comforted. Two days later Martha took her into the basement too, and held her head in a tub of water until she died.

But the murderous couple’s luck had run out; suspicious neighbors called the cops. At week’s end, Ray and Martha, having told their brutal story, were waiting to see whether they would be tried in Michigan, where the maximum penalty is a life sentence, or would be extradited to New York to face the electric chair. Blubbered Martha: “I love him.” Said sly little Ray: “I’m kind. I’m really kind at heart. But they should kill that woman.”